Whether we’re making use of offal or getting the most from bones in stocks and sauces, the momentum of all things nose-to-tail means we’re all a lot more savvy when it comes to cooking meat these days. Fin-to-gill, though – the movement’s seafood cousin – is only just starting to get the same traction; dishes which celebrate less common parts of fish are now starting to appear on menus (we predicted it as a restaurant trend for 2024 here), and it takes a while for trends to trickle down into home cooking. But it’s important that this one does; using all parts of fish and seafood is not only a more sustainable way of eating, but also an easy way to reduce waste. Chef Masaki Sugisaki, of Dinings SW3 in Chelsea, has long been at the forefront of the crusade and is keen to shift mindsets. Part of the problem, he says, is rooted in the fact that people in the UK generally eat much less fish than meat. ‘People tend to go towards chicken and other meat, and fish isn’t something they’re as familiar with,’ Masaki says. ‘Everyone has a perception that they don’t know how to cook it, that there’s a lot of bones; a lot of negatives. However, nowadays a lot of people start caring more about their health and realise that fish is healthy, so are trying something new – that’s the big change I am seeing in customers.’

Using only the finest produce and honouring every part of it is crucial in Japanese culture. When Masaki began cooking in the UK, he initially struggled to find excellent quality seafood, which made him pay closer attention to getting his sourcing right. ‘Japanese cuisine is so simple, so that means the quality of the original ingredient is key,’ he says. ‘For years I was suffering because anything from the market or importers was not always fresh enough. And then I realised that, okay, this is an island, there must be a solution.’ Today, he has cherry picked a network of fishermen and women who he knows and trusts to catch fantastic seafood sustainably (he admits there are still challenges, namely transporting hauls from the coast in an eco-friendly way). Today, he strives to both educate diners and fellow chefs about all things fin-to-gill, most recently with a series of Gill-To-Tail dinners with chefs Roberta Hall-McCarron, Emily Chia and Joe Baker (and an upcoming one with Dan Cox in April) which put the mindset under the spotlight.

From fish bones to tails and fins, Masaki uses it all in his cooking, as well as lesser-loved species like spiny lobster (when we speak he is developing dishes using conger eel – no easy task thanks to its many pin bones). His goal, ultimately, is to shift not only how we cook at home, but encourage more chefs to source from sustainable, independent fishermen. As well as being more eco-friendly and unlocking entirely new dishes, opting for whole fish and overlooked parts is friendly on the wallet too. With that in mind, we’ve asked Masaki and our in-house experts for some of the ways that we can adopt a more sustainable mindset when it comes to fish. 

Plenty of us still turn to the supermarket for fish and, wherever we buy from, tend to stick to fillets. Part of that comes down to ease, but also confidence in cooking fish (we have plenty of how to cook guides here for inspiration). An easy starting point for buying fish more sustainably is to visit your local fishmonger’s and buy whole fish. ‘People sometimes buy the filleted fish and just grill or fry it, but when the fish comes whole, there’s the head, bones and some of the organs, and those are totally edible and create an amazing flavour,’ Masaki explains. You might need to do a little research when it comes to filleting and cooking different parts, but once you have the basics down you'll never look back.

It's incredibly quick and easy to turn fish bones into fragrant, fresh stocks that can be made in batches and frozen. You can use surplus bones from fish you’ve filleted yourself, or you can ask your fishmonger for a kilo of bones (either way, just make sure they're cleaned first). It's generally wise to stick to those from white fish; ones from oily fish can make stock greasy. Masaki says that although people are confident in making stock from chicken carcasses, they are much less so when it comes to fish, but that it’s one of the easiest ways to make more of whole fish. He says there's plenty of potential when it comes to fish bones – he has previously made a citrus emulsion using collagen from the bone, skin and meat of fish, for example. He adds: ‘Sometimes if it’s a small-sized fish, like a mackerel for example, I dehydrate the bones and then I fry them to a crispy state and season with a special salt; it’s a cracker which is very healthy and very tasty.’

Fins and tails might not be the most obvious parts of the fish to use, but when treated right they are packed with flavour that can enhance your cooking. As well as being useful in stocks and sauces, fish fins can be grilled or roasted until crispyd, while plenty of tail cuts are meaty, despite being overlooked at the fish counter (monkfish and lobster tails are among those more commonly used). At one of Masaki's events with chef Emily Chia, a brill tail was dried and infused in hot sake for guests to enjoy with their dinner, a common practice in Japan with blowfish in particular. 'As it is very, very expensive, people don’t want to waste any of the parts that you can eat, we try to consume everything,' he says. 'Traditionally what we do is dry the fin itself and then, after that, toast it over the charcoal and infuse it in hot sake. It infuses the flavour and becomes like sake-based soup.’ Though it creates a wonderfully complex, sake-spiked broth, the technique could be used in other soups and sauces. 

While you can buy roe – fish eggs – separately, ordering species of whole fish means you could have plenty for much better value for money; a four-kilo turbot, for example, could yield as much as 500g of roe, Masaki says. However you buy them, roe can be used in everything from tartlets to sauces and even to top potato skins. Masaki recently prepared a bottarga (a salted, cured fish roe pouch usually made from grey mullet or tuna); it took him three and a half weeks to make it and it was, he says, incredible, with an intensely savoury, fishy flavour. It's often used in Italian cuisine (such as this spaghetti with bottarga sauce).  

Many of us leave the skin on to crisp while cooking, but if you're not a fan or have some to spare, why not turn it into fish skin crackling instead? It's moreish – Dom Auger uses salmon skin, flavours it with soy and fish sauce marinade, dries it out and deep fries it in his recipe above. It's shatteringly crisp and a great way of using leftover skin (you can store some in the freezer until you have enough to make a batch).

Fish heads and cheeks contain plenty of meat and shouldn't be wasted – they can be roasted whole and studded with aromatics (or coated in a sriracha butter sauce, as is the case in one of London restaurant Fallow's signature dishes). A delicacy in places including India and Malaysia, they're often used to create beautifully flavoursome fish head curries, and will bring enormous depth to other stocks and sauces.